Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Delicious, shimmering prose. Wonderful story. Savannah really should give Mr. Berendt a pension.

I have to dim my searchlight to a streetlight. Still think it's good but now, well, now I can't see past the one-hit-wonderness to the glories I once took for granted.

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Book Report: Bored Manhattanite journalist realizes, back in the 1980s, that lunch at a trendy restaurant costs more than air fare to a sexy Southern retreat (those were the days!) and the resulting experience was more lasting. So John Berendt becomes a commuter to Savannah, Georgia, which is the American Bath for sheer physical prettiness, though quite a lot hotter.

Being a good journalist, he meets everyone worth meeting, and being a gay man, meets the show more entire A list of gay life in this small city in record time. Then he stumbles into an amazing story of murder and skulduggery among the social elite as the elite intersects with gay and gay-for-pay culture.

Along the way he talks to every single interesting person in Savannah and builds a word-picture of its typically Southern hierarchical social scene. As The Lady Chablis, an African-American drag queen would say, "Flawless!"

My Review: Not exactly flawless, but wonderful. Southern characters abound, including the old root woman who introduces Yankee John to the world of the haints and spitits and loa that Southerners, even the Babdiss ones, are aware exists, even when they scream and rail about it as evil, wrong, bad...well, they do that about sex too, and with as much effect.

Cemetery dirt is a powerful ingredient in the sympathetic magic the old root women practice. Where it comes from, that is whose grave it was, matters, as do many other factors, and Yankee John reports with wide-eyed fascination on the entire experience of getting involved in the magical universe to help an accused murderer.

The end of the story is, very sadly, the end of a single book career. [The City of Falling Angels] notwithstanding, this is Mr. B's one book. Fortunately, it's a very good one. Unfortunately, it's the only one. And so I ding a half-star off for literary incomplete pass. But it's a helluva read! show less

I don't read a lot of non-fiction but once in a while, I get a book recommendation from someone I really trust and then I have to read it. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is so full of weird and eccentric characters that you forget you're reading a true story. It's got drag queens, invisible dogs, aging society darlings, a murder...and that's just the first half of the book. (If you've seen the movie, forget it - read the book.) Plus now I have to plan a trip to Savannah, Georgia.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a splendid piece of nonfiction. Part true crime, part Savannah guidebook, it reaches beyond both of these to become a captivating character study. John Berendt effortlessly captures the voices of both the people he meets and the city of Savannah, itself. And yet, though his impressions and experiences shape the narrative, he remains an understated presence in the book, offering what he sees and hears with minimal commentary, and leaving us, the readers, with the sense that it is we who are in fact meeting these people and this place. As their new acquaintances, moreover, we're free and welcome to come to our own conclusions about the quality of their characters, and so we, too, become drawn show more into the book's singular series of events. Deftly rendered with elegant and evocative prose, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a funny, insightful, and often touching glimpse into Savannah's charming, mysterious heart. show less

My family and I moved to Savannah from Long Island when I was 11. We were all confused when locals referred to us as "Yankees" -- the baseball team? No, of course they were referring to the Civil War! So, that's a real thing people say, I can confirm. Though I never knew the upper-crust of Savannah that starred in this book, I think the author really captured something essential about Savannah: the humidity, the judgment, the superstition... The dialogue rang true, too. As for the true crime element, I was surprised that the murder appeared so late in the book, but I personally enjoyed all of the scene-setting leading up to it.

This is my second reading of “the book” as it became known in Savannah after being published in 1994, spawning a film version and a resurgence of tourism. Journalist John Berendt came down from New York, stayed a few years, and managed to capture the insular eccentricity of a small slice of Savannah’s culture. He wrote about Lady Chablis, Joe Odum, Jim Williams and other compelling characters with a sharp eye.

The Savannah in the book, one of hard drinking, high and low society; old, new and no money may be history now, but still lives on in some way. Berendt portrayed Savannah as the most interesting place he knew, that was his art. It drew, and still draws, an uncounted number of tourists trying to capture his version of the show more city.

Drinking, backbiting and gossip are the major activities and sport in the story. Antique dealer Jim Williams and his four murder trials for shooting his young lover are central to the book. His trial defense employs the unique services of a voodoo woman named Minerva. “She’s thrown graveyard dirt at some of the best homes in Savannah, God bless her,” Williams told Berendt. “I give her twenty-five dollars a day, and I’ve learned not to ask questions.” show less

Yes, I watched the film years ago, but I did not expect to actually enjoy reading this book (or to finish it, if I’m honest); non-fiction novels, murder mysteries, and “the South” are generally not saleable as modes to draw me in, but somehow I got swept up in Berendt’s depiction of Savannah and the murder that fascinated the town. The murder itself is intriguing – did John Mercer actually murder his gay lover in cold blood, we’re not quite sure by the final pages (even multiple trials and insider backstory in) – but the sell is Savannah itself. Mercer is an interesting character in society, but Savannah has a character for everyone, and it seems that Berendt has found them all by the end of the story. Ranging from society show more ladies to ne’er do well lawyers, from piano legends to the fabulous Lady Chablis, there’s far more to find in the run of the mill characters (who are truly anything but) than the (frankly rather typical) “eccentric” antiques dealer who apparently frames the story. Even without the murder carrying us through the plot, I think this would have made an excellent pastiche style blog if written in modern times, as Berendt travels throughout Savannah and immerses himself in its unique flavour and culture. show less

One of the classics of travel journalism, John Berendt takes us deep into the life of an isolated Georgian town, an island in time.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a portrait of Savannah, an isolated town in Georgia where John Berendt, a journalist from New York found himself by chance and was quickly enchanted by the cast of eccentric characters living there. With a strong architectural restoration movement and a love of old southern values, Savannah quickly struck Berendt as an island stuck in time and a delightful counterpoint to an accelerating modern America.

Berendt acknowledges in a foreword that many took his book to be a novel rather than a piece of travel journalism, perhaps because a natural story evolves – a show more murder – and the protagonists of the town all seem a little larger than life. He observes that while some writers have complained that it’s rare to meet people in life who would hold the reader’s interest, in Savannah’s case:

It was my good fortune that the people I met and wrote about were highly original, fully-blown literary characters who were absolutely compelling without any help from me.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is that rarity of travel journalism – a work of dedication. Berendt didn’t pull the usual trick of spending 2 or 3 drunk weekends in Savannah before recording as gospel the idle gossip of the maid. He rented a house and spent considerable time over several years to get to know the social and cultural scene of this eccentric Georgian town. He was evidently charmed by the place and consequently the reader, too, falls under the spell of the cocktail parties,

It’s the eccentrics of course who capture the reader’s heart; the sullen, disturbed inventor who treasures a bottle of poison powerful enough to kill the entire town; a rich bachelor who likes to disrupt the invasive film productions made outside his house by draping a Nazi banner in view of the camera; the transexual drag queen who terrifies the sensibilities of cultured society and the freeloading lawyer who holds guided tours of historic houses that he himself is squatting at the time.

It’s with the murder trial that the meaning of the title Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Becomes apparent as the rich defendant puts less faith in his lawyers than in a backwoods voodoo witch who charges him $25 a day to curse the opposing DA and hostile witnesses. She stands in the courtroom, chewing voodoo roots and giving the targets of her black magic the evil eye.

Later, she takes Berendt with her to the graveyard at midnight. Any time before the stroke of midnight she can work positive magic but after the clock strikes 12 there’s only the potential for cursing. Much to the annoyance of the defendant she spends most of her time hustling her dead husband for the winning lottery number.

John Berendt is a wonderful storyteller and evidently a very likeable guy as he’s embraced by this conservative community into its most exclusive circles. Or perhaps it’s just the thrill of being written about that encourages the inhabitants of Savannah to confide in this Yankee and make possible his book. At any rate Berendt’s openness and in meeting all elements of society allow him to paint a portrait of this sultry town of hothouse flower eccentrics that make Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil required reading for any travel writer. show less